The New York Observer has a snippet about the forthcoming core dump concerning his crash-and-burn exit from the NYT titled:"As Howell Raines Readies His Memoir, Times Staff Girds." It is unclear exactly what the staff is girding, but it probably has something to do with installing new surge suppressors in the news room.
Deposed New York Times executive editor Howell Raines, sidelined and mostly silent after his eviction last June from West 43rd Street, is throwing himself back into the action. On March 24, The Atlantic Monthly will begin allowing the press to get a preview look at the cover story of its May issue, a gargantuan piece by Mr. Raines pondering his former place of employment.I've never thought Raines was worth a rivet from the WTC, but, hey, I'm prejudiced against his type.The piece will check in at something greater than 20,000 words, according to The Atlantic. That's some 2,500 words longer than Ken Auletta's mammoth New Yorker profile of Raines. Or, by Atlantic standards, it means Raines gets to spend one-third as much space picking through the wreckage of his own career as William Langewiesche spent picking through the wreckage of the World Trade Center.
The squibblet's writer, Scocca, however, gets top marks for the clueless kicker to his item:
Meanwhile, the standards of journalistic scandal have been bumped up considerably. Last week, USA Today revealed that its star reporter, Jack Kelley, had invented several Hong Kong movies’ worth of incident in his dispatches: drowned Cubans, gunned-down Palestinians, bomb-severed heads rolling in the streets.Somebody shoud get this guy a computer and teach him to Google. I'm sure bloggers could remind him in about three nanoseconds. Posted by Vanderleun at March 24, 2004 10:05 AM | TrackBackMr. Blair’s forged datelines and fake sit-down interviews seem suddenly quaint—and Mr. Raines’ purported white liberal guilt seems unremarkable, as editors’ biases go.
Now, it’s hard to remember exactly why the man got fired.
